QUOTES by Ry Cooder
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
I went on tour with Ricky Skaggs and his wife, Sharon White, and the White Family in 2015. It was fantastic. They're all the greatest singers of that country stuff, traditional country up into bluegrass.
Quote by -Ry Cooder
I'm not interested in making folkloric records, but I like to push the traditional format around so that familiar patterns get knocked on the head.
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I got a reputation for being 'eclectic' or some damn thing like that, but to me, the different kinds of music I play are all the same stuff - good time music - and it is the only stuff I can do.
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I used to sneak gospel tunes into my old records, just as kind of a personal thing.
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I like classical music. I especially like the French composers: Ravel in particular. Debussy. That's so soothing in a nervous world.
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Having my son on drums has made a huge difference. I can't stress this strongly enough, in terms of the groove space and style that Joachim gave me to instinctively play what I felt in a more free way, rather than feeling constricted. That's true on record and on stage.
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Uncle Dave Macon was a great balladeer and banjo player from the early part of the 19th century... He would take a social problem or something that he was looking at and make up a clever little song about it, you know, in a language everyone understood, a man of the people.
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I always loved country gospel from back when I was a teenager in high school and started listening to bluegrass quite a lot.
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The Delmore Brothers is hit music - very, very popular - and it still retains that rural flavor and simplicity. I always think of it as family music, really, because families sang it.
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I wanted to be a car pinstriper, but there was nobody to teach me how to do it. So I said, 'Music's good too. I'll do that maybe, since I can't work out how to do this pinstriping.'
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I always have felt that most people don't have the first idea about what musicians, in the traditional sense - I don't mean in the modern media fake way, but traditionally - what they went through, what their lives were like.
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On any given day, if I play the guitar, I can put myself somewhere. I always thought, 'This is the way you go.' It's like a magic carpet, see?
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Critics don't sell records, unfortunately. No one reads what they write anyway.
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When I made the first album, I was 24, and at that age, you have nothing to say. I just played the music I loved and tried to do it justice.
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The story of American pop music is the story of failure. The blues, country music, it's not the story of success. People don't win; they lose.
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I think all the music I do, which ties together, as far as I'm concerned, is fun and entertaining.
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The blues is so expressive - nostalgic but not sentimental, mournful but not pathetic, so humble and close to the earth. It's a nuance-filled thing.
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I'm used to music as a tool, taking the various elements and then making something completely new out of them. And writing film music is the perfect opportunity to do that, because you can look at the film and then just let your imagination soar.
Quote by -Ry Cooder
I can't help what people write or think. If somebody thinks I'm a serious archivist, they're wrong. That's been a problem. It's a shame people take that attitude, because it affects how they listen to the music. It's a big mistake to treat any pop music that way.
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You have to be able to improvise and respond to what's going on around you. Then you might get a good piece of work done.
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It all started back in '69 when I worked with Jack Nitzche on 'Performance.' That was my first experience of doing soundtracks, and I've enjoyed doing them ever since.
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American global economic imperialism is a fact. It's a known fact. It's a simple fact.
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I've done a fair amount of commercials. I did a bunch of Champion spark plug ads and Levi's and Molson Beer. You wouldn't know it. But some of it's damn good.
Quote by -Ry Cooder
Beautiful tunes are all very good and fine, and great musicians are always great, but that alone isn't enough. Most folks, when they see movies or hear records, need something that they find pulls them in, draws them in, and appeals to them beyond just the notes.
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People have all sorts of expectations which you can't meet. Me, I'm so reclusive I stay away from such things as much as I can. I never go anywhere.
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If it hadn't been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would've been unbelievably dull, and I would've been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.
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Santa Monica, where I have always lived, is not a town where you will find storefront Church of God in Christ churches. So, the whole idea of gospel quartet singing is something I never knew existed until I began to hear it on record.
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I don't understand the public, but I do believe the public is oversold and underrated every day. Give the people something interesting, something to chew on, I say.
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If you're taught to hate and fear a people or a country, and it works, it's because of your ignorance of that country. You have no contact with it, nor do you know what you're hating and fearing.
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I keep my mind on track, and I don't get mad, and I don't get frustrated. Well, I do... but creative work, it's a way of controlling all that.
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